Announcing appearances, publications, and occasional thoughts on natural philosophy and ancient history by philosopher, historian, and author Richard Carrier.

Richard Carrier is the renowned author of several books including Sense and Goodness without God and Proving History, as well as numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, the origins of Christianity, and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He has also become a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and the epistemology of history. For more about him and his work visit www.richardcarrier.info.

EVENTS

FtBCon in July!

On the weekend of this July 19-21 Freethought Blogs is running an online conference with a rather impressive lineup. Not only is it free, but it will be all by video streaming on Google+ so you don’t have to travel or pay for a hotel or anything like that. So it’s really about as free as any such thing can get. If you can get online, from anywhere in the world, you can attend! Even from the comfort of your own home.

To learn more, check out PZ Myers’ post Announcing…FtBConscience. Speaker slots are still open, too, so as PZ says, “If you’re part of a group that you’d like to see represented, if you have something valuable to say that fits into our overall theme, contact me soon and we’ll see if we can fit you into our programming grid.” Details there.

As participants are literally all over the planet, this conference could run as much as all 24 hours of all three days. There will be talks and panels. A schedule will be posted before the event, but a list of confirmed speakers so far is available here. There will be a moderated chat room and opportunities for Q&A.

I’ve decided to speak about something deeply personal this time: What the Military Taught Me about Feminism. I’ll be telling some embarrassing and personal stories about my time in the service twenty years ago as a young naive man, and reflecting on how they changed me and contributed to what I know and how I think today. And I want to make Q&A a big part of that. I might make other appearances at the conference (on a panel perhaps). But that will be my main contribution.

I’m looking forward to seeing how well this goes. It’s a great idea and could benefit people all over the world who can’t normally travel or attend conferences in atheism and humanism. So mark your calendars and keep your eye on the developing conference schedule as it appears.

Please don’t talk about feminism….for BOTH sides sake! Talk about the Jesus myth or something else…please.

If you do HAVE to talk about feminism, at this conference, could you at least provide in your talk, real evidence that ‘the Patriarchy’ (the pillar of feminism) is a true theory and therefore a fact?

Can you explaining how you came to hold this belief of yours, this belief in this theory (‘the Patriarchy’) in why in your mind you see it to be true and please also explain how this theory is capable of being falsified and therefore testable?

I can’t, myself, find any peer reviewed research and papers on the subject of ‘the Patriarchy’, outside of Women’s Studies books and literature written by feminists. So I am finding it hard, as a skeptic, to form a belief in this theory of ‘the Patriarchy’. This situation is rather analogous to the historicity of Jesus debate. Apologists believe that there is adequate evidence of Jesus existing because of the text of the Bible. Take the Bible away and your have no evidence for Jesus existing as a man (outside of the Bible Josephus’s reference was an embellishment by another at a later date). So it can similarly viewed that with ‘the Patriarchy’, outside of feminist text, there is no evidence that this theory is true or valid.

So why Richard do you believe so strongly in this construct? Do you often hold beliefs in your life without good evidence? Perhaps you could explain in your upcoming talk why you hold this and other feminist constructs (such as ‘rape culture’ if you believe in that concept as well) to be 100% true and beyond critical inquiry? Thank you for lending me your ear.

Did you look at the conference theme? “Jesus myth” is not relevant. I talk about that plenty at conferences and venue where it is relevant.

Patriarchy denial is not only pathetic, it’s not relevant to my FTBCon talk. I won’t even be mentioning it. Nice bigotry assuming I would, though. (Although, my talk will just happen to include a lot of evidence of patriarchalism in the military of two decades ago, I just won’t be tying it in to any social science theory.)